by Issy Brooke
“Yet I am still an Englishman,” he said stoutly, ignoring her main question. That was suspicious, she thought. “This is not about me. When I came here, my father received me with some surprise – I do not think that he expected me at all. He was ill the first night and could not receive me and the next morning, when we met at last, he was cold and distant. Indeed, it took some persuasion on my part to get him to allow me to stay here. He thought I would lodge elsewhere.”
“He doesn’t lack for space here, but perhaps he only meant that because of the lack of servants. Does he mean to stay here? He must engage help, and soon.”
“I have no idea. The daily woman cooks us a rough meal every night, and outside of that, we fend for ourselves. I eat breakfast standing up in the kitchen, chewing on bread like a labourer. I do not know what my father does. He spends all day in remote rooms of the house. I hear strange noises at night, but when I go to investigate, I find nothing. Mediums come and go. This is what makes me suspect...”
“Go on...”
“I wonder if my mother really is dead?” he said in a rush. “And how did she die, if she is? Did he have something to do with it? If so, perhaps he is trying to contact her.”
“Perhaps. But that would suggest that he truly is your father,” she said. “Many fathers are cold and distant. And perhaps he feels remorse at your mother’s death and seeks only to apologise to her. There does not have to be foul play. And grief would account for his strange behaviour.”
“She died last year, by all accounts that I have heard. He will not still be sunk in grief when they had been estranged almost all their married lives. Oh, I do not know what to think! Perhaps it is just that I do not want my mother to be dead, and I am clutching at straws. But you must believe me. He is not my father, Miss Starr! He did not correct me when I mis-explained the rules of cricket.” He grew animated, and jumped to his feet, pacing around as he beat his fist into the palm of his other hand. “I know you ask me for evidence, hard facts, real reasons, but this is a matter of what the heart knows. Still, my father had a deep and abiding love of cricket. I have few memories of him, but one is of playing the game with him. My father, I am sure, was not quite as tall, and I know that you will say this is but a child’s remembrance, but it is true. This man won’t speak to me, won’t acknowledge me, and only allows me to stay because he has no reason to throw me out.”
He stopped dead. Marianne followed his sudden panicked gaze. They both stared at the door that led to the hall.
Footsteps echoed. It was a slow pace, dragging, almost shuffling. Marianne looked back at Mr Bartholomew and mouthed, “Is that him?”
He nodded.
The footsteps stopped. Then they came towards the drawing room door. It was flung open with a vigour quite the opposite to the heavy steps. Marianne remained seated.
The man in the doorway clutched Mr Bartholomew’s discarded revolver in his hand. He was a tall man, spare of build, and his age made him look underfed rather than lean and lithe. He had hair as dark as George’s, though it was coarse and stood out stiffly like it had been dried out in a desert sun, and he wore no hat. He must have left it by the front door with his outdoor things. He had rather pale brown eyes that were small and shadowed by thick coarse grey eyebrows, and his cheeks were sunken. The lightness of his eyes seemed strange against his darker hair, but she wondered if he suffered from cataracts. He stared at Marianne in shock, and a great deal of displeasure.
Yet he spoke in a measured and polite tone. “Good day, madam. I am the proprietor of this house. I do not know your business, and I hope you will forgive this bluntness, but you must leave. I was not expecting visitors, and we are not arranged for such calls.” Then he glared at his son. “You trespass mightily upon my goodwill, and you shall answer for this.”
She got to her feet and tried to answer him with dignity but she kept her attention on the gun in his hand. “I beg pardon for my intrusion, sir. I am Miss Marianne Starr, and I–”
“I do not care who you are,” he replied. “You must go now. George, take her to the door. And come back here immediately, to explain yourself. Or leave, with her, and do not ever come back.”
He sounded like every inch the father, and now a new suspicion entered Marianne’s head. If one of them was a fake, it might not be the man now standing to one side of the door, in his own house, very much the confident landowner. Had the son not spoken of a great deal of wealth that the older Mr Bartholomew had inherited?
Mr George Bartholomew went to Marianne’s side and led her out of the room. She half-turned at the door to bid the older man farewell, but he walked away from her, towards the empty fireplace, and remained with his back to her. She revised her first opinion of him. He was not measured and polite. He was measured and rude. Very rude.
George Bartholomew took her to the main door, and begged her to wait. Once more she found herself uneasily alone in the vast hallway, and she was relieved when the younger Bartholomew returned quickly. He had an envelope of paper money to be drawn at the Bank of England, and a small bag of gold coins. “This will get you started in the investigation,” he said.
She took it and examined the five-pound notes. The whole sum was far more than she was going to ask for. But she was sensible, and said nothing to that effect as she slipped it all into her bag to live among the handkerchiefs, combs, books and gun already in there. It was not just payment. It was future freedom. “Thank you.”
“And one more thing.” He pressed a wavy-edged card into her hand. “Take this. It is the name of my solicitor in the city. He knows my business and he has more money there, should you need it, in the event that you are unable to contact me. I will be trying to find my mother’s final resting place and I do not know where my search will take me.”
“Sir, you could contact the police, or a runner to act on your behalf to find her.”
“I have spoken with an investigator and a detective. They have not achieved much. It is of little importance in the grander scheme of things. I am also seeking out Wade Walker, and that search too is equally fruitless. But I know he is out there! He must be.”
“Just as you know that man is not your father?” she asked.
He missed her flippancy. “Yes,” he replied earnestly. “Exactly so.”
Seven
Marianne got home without incident, and took to her rooms for the remainder of the day. She wrote everything down, so that she would remember it clearly in the future. She also began a list of things she had to do and people she had to find.
Jack Monahan was a problem. Not only had he thrust himself upon her at the séance, but he had also come to the house. She would have to find out about him, and discover if he was a man to be pitied, or a potential danger. She started a new page in her notebook for him.
Then she began to read the latest journals and periodicals, and a stack of newspapers that had been read already by Price and Phoebe. She missed the constant debate and meetings of university and tried to keep up to date through magazines and newspapers. A story about the events in East Prussia caught her eye, simply because George Bartholomew had been there, but it was all about the Junkers – the aristocracy in the region – and their refusal to give up their ancient rights to keep serfs under their thrall. For serfs, she thought, you may as well say slaves. But the legal language in the article bored her and her eyes flitted on, caught suddenly by the word Maskelyne.
But the story was not about the celebrated stage magician from the Egyptian Hall. She was eager to discover what he was doing, as all the rumours were that he was closeted up and writing a book that would shatter the public’s illusions about magic. Instead, it mentioned a “true heir and perhaps rival” to Maskelyne called Harry Vane, lately arrived in London and already stirring up the salons with his shows and talks.
She had been hearing more and more of him, and she made a new note to seek him out. She would be interested to hear what he had to say, and saw him as another potential ally in her miss
ion to lead the British public away from superstition and firmly into the future – a future of science. She travelled to public lectures as often as she could, and it was heartening to see more and more women attending these events.
She was a member of the University Club for Women, a rather new venture that linked up the recent graduates of all the colleges that now accepted women. They met at Bond Street, and she thought it would be worth her while popping in soon, and asking if anyone there knew anything. She looked at her list of questions again. She wanted to find out about Edgar Bartholomew and Wade Walker. She wanted to know exactly why George Bartholomew had returned to England. She wondered about Price Claverdon’s ill-advised situation of blackmail. She flipped the page of the notebook and studied the barest, blankest page: who was this Jack Monahan?
She was interrupted in her thoughts by a knock at her door. Her father was in a lucid period, and requested that she spend the evening reading to him, and she agreed though she could not persuade him that there were more interesting things to read than a journal of chemical science. The evening dragged, but he was happy, and she had to remind herself that she should be a dutiful daughter. She owed him a lot, and it was her turn to repay that debt.
She stifled her frustration and smiled like a pleasant young lady and counted out the minutes until she could finally abandon the discussion of Graham’s effusion and diffusion of gases, and head to bed.
The next morning, she was startled quite early by a quick rapping on her bedroom door. She was not yet dressed, and pulled her loose robe around her as she called out, “Who is it?”
Phoebe, as immaculate as if she had been up for three hours, danced into the room. Of course, she had staff who would dress her. Emilia, her personal maid, was a particularly patient genius. “Who do you think it is? Have you a stream of gentleman callers? What happened yesterday? Oh! You have changed your curtains. I like the red. When you came home, I was being held hostage by Mrs Digby and her half-dozen daughters, and they simply wouldn’t leave. I hoped you might manufacture a disaster to save me.”
“Oh, I didn’t realise. What is that?”
“This,” said Phoebe, waving the newspapers at Marianne, “is a revelation. You must see it. They have just been delivered. I wrestled it from Price’s grasp before he took it to breakfast and covered it in egg and fish. He will be annoyed with me. I don’t care.”
“You do care.”
“Yes, I do. I shall be awfully contrite later though. Now, look!” She opened one of the wide papers up and flung it onto Marianne’s bed. “Look. Just look!”
“An electric corset with health giving properties?” Marianne said, peering at the half-page advertisement. “No, Phoebe, we’ve spoken of this. It is nonsense. It will kill you more likely than do anything useful. Just like that headband of zinc and copper discs that you bought for your migraines. Useless.”
“The discs do work but I cannot stand the smell of vinegar. But surely, Marianne, the corset will fill me with vibrancy?”
With a sigh, Marianne sat on the bed and pulled the large paper closer. “There will be ink on my sheets and the maids will be angry,” she remarked as she scanned down the narrow columns of tiny print. “Anyway, you have quite enough vibrancy, I feel.”
“There are quotes there from some eminent people.”
“Anyone could print anything. No, Phoebe, I really would not recommend this. But I do not think this is really why you’ve come to see me so early.”
Phoebe slid onto the bed alongside Marianne. “So astute. Go on. Tell me everything. You went without me to the Bartholomew place, and I am unhappy, though it could not be helped.”
Marianne told her cousin everything that had happened at the house. Phoebe nodded seriously when she was finished.
Phoebe began to fold the newspapers back into manageable sizes again, ready to take into the breakfast room for Price. “Are you definitely taking the case, then?”
“Yes.”
“Thrilling! You must find out all you can about Edgar Bartholomew. Marianne, do you not ever worry about making enemies?”
“Mrs Silver is hardly a terrifying nemesis.”
“Perhaps not, but there are others. What about that dreadful little man you exposed last month?”
“Oh, the Incredible Duke Illanni? Wasn’t he vile! He swore to disembowel me in Downing Street, which I thought was a curious threat. For safety’s sake I have avoided calling on the prime minister, of course.”
“Of course,” laughed Phoebe. “But seriously, are you not sometimes afraid? He was very upset that you made such a fool out of him. And not just you, too. Didn’t that man, the one you admire, Harold what’s-his-face, do the same?”
“Harry Vane,” said Marianne with a sigh. “Oh, I simply must meet him. I keep reading about him since he came to London and I do so want to talk with him.”
“I am sure your paths will soon cross. But once this Vane had hold him of, coming after your exposure, well, that fake Illanni was quite done for. He has been run out of town.”
“And with good reason. He really was a menace. Simeon was annoyed, of course. He admired the man’s tricks and wanted to learn more.”
“Well, your Simeon is a menace all of his own.”
“Hush now. He is a good friend.”
“Marry him and be done.”
“Oh goodness, no, I should as rather marry a fish. We are too much friends, and that is all. I know him too well to ever want to marry him.” Marianne got up and began to choose her clothing for the day, laying it out on the bed and checking for stains.
“I’ll send my Emilia to you,” Phoebe said. “You have repairs and darning to be done there.”
“Thank you.”
Phoebe stood up and shook out her skirts, then scooped up the papers. “Come along. You shall miss breakfast at this rate.”
“I intend to. I have other things to do.”
SHE WAS NOT GOING TO sit around and wait for the next thing to happen to her. Marianne had never sat around and watched life go by. She simply wasn’t built that way. Instead, she sallied forth into the fresh open air and took the next train into town.
She marched briskly, buffeted by crowds and street hawkers and tourists and workers and children and dogs and noise. She headed for Simeon’s workshop, wanting to tell him what had been going on, and perhaps to ask for his advice in how to find out more about Edgar Bartholomew and the irritating Jack Monahan. She found her old friend hard at work on a cabinet of mirrors, set at cunning angles to disguise their true purpose, and instead the mirrors merely showed the contents of a hidden compartment.
“You are very clever,” she remarked as he demonstrated it.
“Yes,” he said. “And everyone knows it, which is why they target me so much.”
Ah. She had thought he might have moved on to a new paranoia by now, but obviously not. “They seek to emulate you,” she said soothingly. “They are copying you out of flattery.”
“Then why do they do so much better than me?” he wailed suddenly, and flung himself dramatically into a shabby armchair, his legs sticking out at angles like an abandoned puppet. “There is a conspiracy against me, I can tell. There are whispers.”
“Why would there be?”
“I am different. I have no background, no history. It marks me.”
“Oh, tush. What rot. You are what you make yourself. The world is changed, Simeon. Even the meanest man can rise, now. You are not what your father makes you.”
“And as I have no father, that is all to the good. Do you want some cake?”
“Yes, please.”
He jumped up. He had to be in motion. When he stopped moving, thoughts and worries would overwhelm him. So he bustled around the end of the large room set aside as the kitchen, and came back with a slab of something sticky and gingery on a clean plate. His own, she noticed, was marked with pickle and the remnants of a pie. But at least he knew how to treat his guests well.
She blamed his sloven
ly habits on his erratic upbringing. The son of a prostitute, he had been in a Foundling Orphanage until he was adopted by an impoverished but well-meaning clergy couple, who doted on the young boy but brought him up with equal measures of discipline, praise and the fear of Our Lord. They had encouraged him to pursue his interests and apprenticed him to a carpenter who specialised in the theatre. The clergy couple then promptly expired, leaving him very little in the way of inheritance, but no lasting troubles, at least.
Marianne had met him when she was still in her first year at college. She had come back to London and was attending a public lecture about the possible use of electricity in telepathic transference. She had listened to the start of the lecture with deep scepticism and finished it utterly unconvinced, and a little sad that she did not believe it. They had sat next to one another and very politely ignored one another as they were perfect strangers, and that would have remained the case. Except when the lecture ended, Simeon had risen to his feet, seen that she was unaccompanied, and said, “Oh, I suppose I ought to offer to escort you to a cab or the station? Only I need to go quite quickly because there is a show on I need to see. There will be an elephant.”
And that was it. She, too, needed to see the elephant, and they became friends with a shared interest in the workings of magicians, mediums and mystery.
She told him about the visit to Mr Bartholomew, and he listened with interest. “And you have taken the case, then?”
“Yes.”
“So what is your next move?”
“I shall find out all I can about the older Mr Bartholomew. And I must hunt out Mr Wade Walker.” And look up this Jack Monahan, she thought, but decided not to tell Simeon that. He was concerned enough for himself; she didn’t want to add worries about her to his burdens.
“How will you find out about these men?”
“By using my innate charm when speaking to people.”
